Usually it's the petitions with lots and lots of names that attract the most attention. This week a petition with only three signatures has sparked the kind of publicity most petitioners dream about.

It's on the hot-button topic of immigration, it's raised thorny questions about how far you go to protect the right to freedom of speech and it has left one particular senator firmly wedged between a rock and a hard place.

The right to petition Parliament to raise a grievance and to demand political action (or inaction) goes back hundreds of years and has been enshrined in the Australian constitution since Federation.

There are differences in the way petitions are tabled in the Senate and in the House of Representatives. Under changes introduced in 2008 a Standing Committee on Petitions was established to ensure that all petitions presented to the House of Representatives were considered and responded to by the relevant Minister. And in the House, all petitions can be tabled by the Chair of the Committee. In the Senate though, petitions must be tabled by an individual senator. (The Senate also allows online petitions whereas the House of Representatives does not.)

The petition that has landed ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries in hot water was signed by three people from western Sydney who "pray" the Parliament will ban Muslim immigration for 10 years... so an assessment can be made on the social and political disharmony currently occurring in the Netherlands, France and the UK, so as to ensure we avoid making the same mistakes".

The document also calls for Christians to be given priority as both immigrants and refugees.

Senator Humphries tabled the petition on Thursday last week after other senators had refused to do so. Despite not agreeing with the sentiments of the petitioners and finding the contents of the document "somewhat offensive", Senator Humphries believes the petitioners had the right to present their view to members of the Parliament. In other words his belief in the right of free speech outweighs the discomfort he feels about what the petitioners are calling for.

His decision has left him open to attack from Muslim leaders and others who disagree with what he's done.

The president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Ikebal Patel has declared the petition "abhorrent" and says that if Senator Humphries didn't have the conviction to speak in support of it he should not have tabled it.

Debate on the issue has raged on talkback radio in Canberra. Some opposed to the Senator's action argue that the right to freedom of speech comes with a responsibility to avoid anything that might encourage religious bigotry. He's also been accused of "dog whistling" anti-Muslim sentiment. Those who applaud him say he's protecting the right of every citizen to have their say, an important part of our democracy.

(There are rules though about what you can and cannot say in petitions. The language must be "moderate" and the terms of the petition "must not be illegal or promote illegal acts".)

The publicity over whether the petition should have been tabled has also encouraged debate over the actual contents of the document - some of it, sadly, so bigoted that I won't repeat it here.

The great irony for Senator Humphries as he stands in the firing line is that this is not the first time this petition has been tabled. And it's not the first time a politician has tabled a petition he or she doesn't support. He just happened to be the one tabling this particular petition, this particular time, when it came to the attention of the media.

The Canberra Times has revealed today that this particular petition has been tabled in both the Senate and the House of Representatives a total of 48 times since 2007 by 36 different politicians, several more than once, including Senator Humphries himself.

In 2008, the then minister for immigration and citizenship Chris Evans responded to the petition saying, in part:

"Australia is and will remain a multicultural society. The Government is committed to a non-discriminatory immigration policy and has no plans to review this aspect of the migration program."

There is no limit to the number of times a petition can be tabled, even after a minister has dealt with the matters raised.

There's no reason to expect these petitioners to surrender their campaign anytime soon. Other petitions in the future - on this or other controversial topics - will no doubt cause similar soul searching amongst our elected representatives. After all, it's what partly they're paid for. But it's not that often voters get such an insight into the tussle between a politician's conscience and what they believe to be their public duty.

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